For a month or so I’ve used my computer with the Windows Start menu at the top. Am I crazy? Most likely. I started out doing it on my home computer (on all monitors), while keeping the start menu at the bottom at work. Honestly, it is feels quite weird and wrong in the beginning, and I was constantly throwing my mouse southwards just to realize that my work had been for nothing, as the Start menu was actually up north. I really couldn’t impose this waste of time upon my employers, that’s why I kept it down south there.

After a couple of weeks had passed, things started to shift. I was now starting to notice how wrong it was for the Start menu to be at the bottom at work - and how cumbersome it really is! So I moved it. And everybody laughed at me.

So why’d you want to move your Start menu to the top of the monitor?

See how all the menus are in the top? Usually - excluding gaming and other special applications - our mouse will be working inside a menu, dragging a window, using the Start menu, or in the main content area of a browser/application. Common to most of these are that they all happen at the top of the monitor. As the monitor gets larger, the distance between the top and the bottom becomes greater.

Having the Start menu at the top really saves a lot of mouse movement. The only negative side that I’ve become aware of is that you can’t just toss the mouse top-right like a maniac and click to close a window - that’ll now activate the system clock. When using multiple monitors, that really isn’t an issue as you wouldn’t be able to do that anyways since your mouse would enther the other monitor.

The greatest opponent of this efficiency improvement really is… Tradition. I shall not try to hide the fact that it takes a lot of getting used to. After having moved my mouse towards the bottom and hammering a fist in the table for the 100th time, I was almost about to give up. But hang in, for the sake of your carpal tunnel syndrome suffering hand, MOVE THAT START MENU!

Mark S. Rasmussen

I'm the CTO at iPaper where I cuddle with databases, mold code and maintain the overall technical & team responsibility. I'm an avid speaker at user groups & conferences. I love life, motorcycles, photography and all things technical. Say hi on Twitter, write me an email or look me up on LinkedIn.